Sunday, September 13, 2009

College Football Round-up: Jim Tressel Shits His Sweater Vest, Charlie Weiss' Fupa Loses To Michigan, Chip Kelly Escapes to Lose Another Week

I fucking love College Football. I love it even more than I love the NFL. I love the crazy offenses. I love the spread options, the pistols, the triple options, none of which would you ever see in the Pros. I love all the conferences and big time programs and their storied histories. I love the great monuments to sport with names like The Horseshoe, Death Valley, and The Swamp. What isn't to love about stadiums that become the largest cities in their state on game day? But more than all that I love all the teams, and I love their coaches.

Or, I should say, love to hate their coaches. After watching Dave Wannstedt attempt to coach the Miami Dolphins years ago I made a vow that I never wanted to see him or his mustache succeed. Therefore, I hate Pitt. I was never a fan of Charlie Weis or his gunt in New England and I've always hated the chi-mo endorsing Golden Domers of Notre Dame. Now that they've joined together I can focus my dislike of them into a burning beam of hate like the sun through a magnifying glass. It doesn't matter who the head coach of Oregon is I will hate them til my heart turns black. Ohio State is much like Ben Affleck, their undeserved earlier success has led them to have a false sense of importance.

The fun thing with College Football is the preseason rankings which the networks hold up as the one true barometer of how good a team is before a single game is even played. As one might expect with such a flawed system teams are often vastly overrated in the season. Often times the overrated programs have coaches on my hate list which makes my hatred for that school/person that much more potent. I'll sit intently staring at the screen channeling my will hoping it will cause them to fail. And when they do, how sweet it is!!

Saturday and Saturday night provided so much fail I could hardly keep from ripping off my pants and masturbating I was so excited. Let's do a quick lengthy recap, shall we?

I was at the Dawg's game when Michigan upset Notre Dame and Charlie Weiss' FUPA in the waning seconds on Saturday. Despite my inability to see Notre Dame's demise, my heart grew two sizes knowing that ol' Uncle Charlie might not be long for the head coaching job at Notre Dame. You see Michigan has been terrible in recent years falling from perennially proud contender in the Big 10 to a team that lost to Appalachian State just two years ago. Then the school that was built on the tradition of the I formation and running over people decided to switch things up and hire the architect of West Viginia's high powered spread option offense, Rich Rodriguez.

Sad thing is, the current personnel of Michigan fit Rich-Rod's system like Oprah in Britney Spears' "Oops...I did it again!" cat suit. I thought the Wolverine-spread experiment was destined to fail and all signs seemed to be pointing that way. However, after a win against hated rival Notre Dame and the man whose gunt enters a room 5 minutes before he does Rich-Rod just bought himself more time. Conversely, Charlie Weiss and his flap are now on the hot seat from the loss. A Notre Dame team on the rise isn't supposed to lose to a Michigan team in the doldrums rebuilding. That they did gave me a schadenfreude hard on at a rather uncomfortable time. It's tough to stand and cheer when yer worried about cock-braining the old lady in front of you.

The most anticipated game of Saturday was a rematch of last years rout of Ohio State University by USC. Despite losing 8 players to the NFL draft many thought USC's defense would destroy Terelle Pryor and the Buckeye's offensive while the Trojan offense would be able to make enough plays to win handily. Others like OSU Alum/former player turned announcer, Kirk Herbstreit, thought that playing in front of 106,503 fans would rattle USC's true freshmen QB Matt Barkley. That combined with OSU's tough defense would spell doom for the young USC team.

There is a reason no one really listens to Herbstreit, and scrotum sucking ball-fondling odes to his alma mater are a large part of that. Never trust Herbstreit to be objective when it comes OSU. Actually just never trust him in general when it comes to OSU.

USC trailed 10-15 starting their last drive of the night and they faced an uphill battle against a tough OSU D and the 100,000+ strong of the Horseshoe. A touchdown would win the game. However, USC should have never been given the oppurtunity to score and win. They should have been down at least 19-10 in the waning minutes of the game. But the Buckeye's went conservative and kicked field goals on two occasions when inside the USC 5 yard line. Buckeye fans can blame Jim Tressel for the loss.

Jim Tressel's attire is a perfect reflection of what kind of play caller he is. His short sleeve button up wants to say "laid back and cool guy" but is drowned out by his cinched up tie, glasses and trademark sweater vest all of which scream "The stick up this man's ass has a stick up its ass!!". Tressel's arch-conservative, anti-abortion, pro-deregulation leanings were on full display early in the second quarter when a long drive left OSU with a 4th and goal from the USC 1. The playcalling the prior 3 plays had been bad enough, a weak pass play, then two runs straight into the USC line. Then rather than do something crazy like spread out the USC D and let Terelle try and make magic happen with either his arm or legs or even try a QB sneak with the 6'6" 240 lb Pryor Tressel opted to just kick a field goal.

Now, I realize it was early in the game and common football logic dictates that you just take the points in that situation. However, you are playing USC who destroyed you the year before, you are at home, you know that you NEED points against a Pete Carrol team AND even if you didn't convert on 4th down you leave USC backed-up worse than me after a cheese binge. Your defense has been lights out all game and chances are you get the ball right back.

But that's not the Tressel way. Nor is it to try and create mismatches for your WRs by spreading out the offense every once and a while. Hell, if Tressel does that he might have actually have given Pryor some room to run, the one area USC had trouble with OSU's offense. Tressel however decided to rail against universal health care and kick the field goal. He lost as a result.

The night cap of despised coaches/programs was the University of Oregon vs. Purdue in a way less cool match-up of Big-10 vs Pac 10 than USC vs OSU. After last week's debacle against Boise State I was hoping to witness Oregon's descent into a season of hell. A loss to Purdue would be a healthy push down the stairs. Sadly that was not the case.

The head coaching job at Oregon is Chip Kelly's to lose and he looked perilously close to losing it last week. As Kelly watched his team fall apart due to sloppy play and mental errors you could see he had the Ty Wilingham face of "Oh shit, this is not how I thought things would happen. What do I do now? What do I do now, dammit?!?!". The whole while Mike Belotti the former coach turned AD was down on the sidelines giving pep talks to players and telling what they were doing wrong. Yup, the AD was down on the sidelines doing more coaching than the head coach. Not the way to start the season.

The were various times in the Purdue game, a turnover here, a missed assignment there, when the Ty face would start to creep onto Kelly's visage. Luckily the Ducks managed to stop Purdue on 4th down with a minute left to seal the deal. That didn't stop Belotti, again down on the sideline, from dispensing coaching wisdom to the sideline reporter.When asked when asked what he thought of the tams play so far he got rather specific saying something to the effect of "Well if the WR made a crisper cut out of his break and the QB wasn't drifting away from the line when he threw and the right guard kicked out instead of in on that last play I think we could've had a touch down.". In the brief interview Belotti also mentioned that he still hadn't figured out where he wanted to be on game day up in his box or down on the field, but the manor in which he said it made it seem as if he intended on being down on the sidelines but knew that his proper place, as an AD was up in the booth.

The fact that Oregon escaped another terribly sloppy game, this time with a W was rather upsetting for me. I'm an addict for Oregon fail. But still, seeing them struggled with a lower tier team like Purdue did warm the cockles of my heart. For I know that they are not the contender they painted themselves as to start the season. They are not in the top tier of the Pac-10 and since the second tier includes everybody but USC and Cal at the top and WSU at the bottom that means that there is a decent chance we can beat them when they come up here this year. That'd be sweet!

All in all it was a fun Saturday of football with lots of good game and some quality fails as well. Who knows what next week holds? Will Charlie Weis' gunt gain sentience and attempt to remove itself from it's host? Will Jim Tressel have tie too tight and suffer at stroke because of it? Will Mike Belotti push Chip Kelly out of the way and resume the mantle of head coach, the headset with it, while Kelly cries in the corner like a kid who had his favorite transformer stolen? Only time will tell.

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